


Not Like Other Girls

by zzzzzzzo



Series: Harry Potter Works, all set in the same universe [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Let Me Live My Life, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, dudley is transgender, mtf, okay juST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 12:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11208210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zzzzzzzo/pseuds/zzzzzzzo
Summary: Dudley doesn't feel like a normal boy. Gregory's lost all he thought was stable. In a time of need, can these unlikely two come together?





	Not Like Other Girls

**Author's Note:**

> i can explain...

**Dudley Dursley**

There’s no way Harry can ever know what I saw on that night when the dementors arrived in Little Whinging. There’s no way anyone can know.

I guess it began when I was seven. We were repainting my bedroom, and there was a color called azalea among the swatches. It caught my eye immediately. Bold, and vivid, I felt it suited me much more than that drawl blue it was before. I had pointed at it with confidence, cast mum and dad my usual demanding glare. To my shock, they looked.. disgusted, somehow. Harry was snickering behind his hand.

“Err… No, not that one, champ.” Dad looked disgruntled, while Mum eyed me with something like worry, but not quite. Why were they looking at me like that? What did I do?

I wanted to throw a tantrum. Stamp my foot and demand they let me do what I wanted. That look stopped me though. I had never seen it before.

Mum eventually suggested another color, a vivid green that I could be satisfied with. Still, I couldn’t help but think of that elusive azalea.

\---

For some reason, I’ve never felt like I belonged in an all boys’ school.

That’s weird, right? I am a boy, so of course I belong there. I shouldn’t miss home this much. I shouldn’t miss Harry’s familiar presence after being surrounded by all these other boys and being uncomfortably aware of how much more  _ man _ they all were.

But I did.

Blimey, I sure did.

\---

It’s not as if I can tell them, right? There’s no way I can.

_ I _

_ I think I’m _

_ I might actually be _

_ Would it be okay if I was a _

Every attempt scrapped immediately. I can’t tell them. I’m their only kid, for god's sake! It would crush them. 

Even more so, it would crush me.

\---

Piers was well received by puberty. His acne evened out, features sharpened, and form grew more masculine. When we go out on the town, a lot of girls flirt with him. Sometimes, when I’m talking to him, I sound like one of them.

One day in the summer before tenth grade, while we’re playing video games in my room, he suddenly kisses me. Presses hard for a moment, then shoves me away as if repulsed.

He leaves my room and doesn’t speak to me for three weeks.

Finally, he comes over. We begin playing games as usual without sparing words for discussion.

Eventually, I speak. “Why did you do it?”

His answer is quiet. “I don’t know. You just… You really do seem like a girl, somehow.”

Mine is quieter. “I think I might be one.”

\---

Our relationship stays tentative and mostly undiscussed. There are occasional kisses that set my stomach aflutter. For the most part, we continue as if nothing has happened, until one day, when we’re lazing around in my dorm reading magazines. Piers nudges me.

“Hey, Duddy. This sounds kind of like you, dontcha think?”

I wriggle over and peer over his shoulder. It’s an article about a woman who was actually born as a man. They refer to her as a “transexual.” I can’t seem to take my eyes off of that word.

I since have torn out the magazine page and now keep it safe underneath my mattress.

\---

That summer, the “dementors” attack. One pushes me to the ground. Above me is a gaping, empty mouth, and from it I can hear my parents’ disgusted voices. 

“Unbelievable!” 

“My son, a faggot?”

“How could you, Diddykins? That’s just…”

“Disgusting, that’s what it is! What the hell kind of man wants to traipse about in a dress?”

“What’s happened to him? Was it because of that school? I knew it was risky…”

“It must be, innit? We’ll have to beat this out of him. There’s no other way out of it.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then I have no son. No child whatsoever.”

That horrible, screaming mouth is so, so close, when finally it withdrew. A gleaming bright stag had overtaken it, heading it off. I fall back weakly, breath heaving. No, there’s no way. I can’t tell. Not them… Not anyone.

\---

I find Piers kissing another girl. I mean… a girl, I guess. When I confront him about it later, he seems bemused that I’m upset. 

“I mean, that was just fooling around, right? You weren’t…  _ serious _ , were you?”

I can’t muster the words to respond. I walk off then and there, and haven’t spoken to him since. Of course, I was an idiot. Who in their right mind would prefer me over a real girl? Me, with my flat ass and hunky muscles and protruding stomach. I’m just about as unwomanly as you could get. I’ve just been wasting my time, deluding myself like that.

\---

Even knowing that, I can’t help this burning need to be a girl. I turn my sights away from people I already know, not wanting to lose another friend. Instead, I start sneaking out of the house to meet new people, dressed as a girl. I gradually purchase all kinds of lovely clothes, and keep them hidden under the floorboards. With a corset to push my fat in the right places, a little makeup, and my hair beginning to grow out, I can sort of pass as a plump woman. It’s a start. I don’t get flirted with much or anything, but that’s okay. Even just being out and about in girl’s clothes is a comfort, much more natural than being boyish, somehow. 

_ Maybe, _ I think one night, changing into my nightclothes after another night out,  _ maybe this will be enough. I can just do this. I don’t need more, really. _

\---

_ I need more. _

\---

The summer before my senior year I meet a boy. His short hair sticks up around his head like bristles low on his forehead, and his small eyes often go vacant when he spaces out. Still, they seem to brighten somehow when talking to me. We compare muscles and trade gossip about people we dislike. I was a bit wary of him at first, but he took to me right away.

“It’s weird, innit,” he says at one point, grinning dopily at me, “even though you’re a girl an’ all, you kinda remind me of my old best friend.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”

“He is… er, was, Crabbe. He’s gone now.” Some of that brightness leaves his eyes.

“Oh, wow.” I squirm awkwardly. It’s a rare thing, meeting someone highschool age who has friends who’ve passed. I wonder how it happened, but don’t ask. Instead I seek a way to change the subject. “Speaking of names, I didn’t catch yours just yet?”

“Oh,” he says, a big smile back on his face, goofy in its stupidness but charming, somehow. “It’s Goyle. Gregory Goyle.”

\---

**Gregory Goyle**

Thing’s’ve been a lot different since Crabbe died. The moment after we were rescued from the Fiendfyre, Malfoy disappeared, muttering something about a bathroom. I couldn’t find him after that, though that may have been due to the fray of the Battle… and a lack of trying, to be honest. I wasn’t sure what I would say to him if I did see him. An integral part of our trio had disappeared, and it felt like approaching him would be completely different without Crabbe’s hulking presence by my side.

So, I’ve stayed out of touch. A summer usually full of visits to the Malfoy Manor and spending time with my father has been replaced by gazing out windows and waiting for a letter from my dad to come. See, after the Battle of Hogwarts, a kind of wizarding Nuremberg trial was held. It was decided that former Death Eaters would be, again, let off, considering the Dark Lord was dead for good this time. It didn’t seem likely they would relapse, and most haven’t. Most. My father is not one of most.

He was caught shortly after the Battle torturing muggles, and sent to Azkaban accordingly. It… it  _ infuriated _ me. I was never a huge fan of muggles, but to do something like that… It angered me, not for the benefit of their wellbeing, but for my family’s. Now, on top of everything else, I’ve lost a father because he couldn’t just let sleeping dogs lie. 

I’ve grown to almost hate him, somehow. For the sake of rebelling I’ve gone as far as to start mingling in muggle areas. I’ve even researched some of their history, hence my knowing about the Nuremberg trials. It’s interesting stuff. Certainly more fun to learn about than whatever Professor Binns teaches. Muggles, really, they might be alright. I mean, they do pretty well for themselves, considering.

\---

I meet a muggle girl. Her blonde hair is chin-length and straight, and her face pudgy and clearly has a penchant for scowling. She catches my eye, somehow. Granted, it would be hard to miss her. Her physique is gargantuan for a girl, with broad shoulders and a height barely less than mine. She’s nothing like anyone I’ve seen before, and I can’t help but start a conversation with her. We hit it off quickly. Her manner is gruff but with occasional giggles so girlish I can’t help but blush. Uniquely pretty and domineering both. 

Only when I absolutely must leave to even hope to make curfew do I go. Before I do, she grabs a napkin, scribbles on it, and hands it to me. “My number,” she explains, eyes averted shyly. “Call me sometime, okay?”

I can only nod, hoping my incomprehension won’t show too clearly. It isn’t until she’s out of sight that I examine the writing. There are ten numbers there, and beside them, a name. 

_ Dutchess _ . 

\---

Using that set of code, you can contact someone via a ‘phone.’ I learn this the next time I visit the muggle library to try and make sense of this. I quickly fall down a hole, of how phone’s evolved from huge clunky things to tiny devices you can fit in your pocket, and from there to other pieces of technology. Televisions, refrigerators, even the computer I use to research… It all really is incredible, somehow. Without magic to provide an easy answer, muggles have worked for thousands of years to achieve even the simplest feats. Some would say that shows inferiority. I think it shows strength.

\---

I decide to try to kiss Dutchess. Key word being  _ try. _ She flinches away as if scalded the moment I lean in, then makes a hasty excuse and leaves without another word. I’m left sitting dumbstruck in the cafe we had been chilling in, wondering what I could have possibly done wrong.

These past few weeks of summer have been some of the best of my life. I’ve gotten a cell phone, which I as of yet have been able to hide from Mum. I doubt she’d care if she found out, though, she’s been so off since Dad was arrested. So distant, like I lost both of my parents... But anyway, I’ve got a phone, and it’s been awesome. Dutchess and I have stayed up until the wee hours of the morning, talking until I cry from laughter. We meet up nearly every day and visit all sorts of places. Movie theaters, which fascinate me, and muggle amusement parks, that terrify me in their rickety machinery that I still don’t fully trust. It’s been amazing, and… Well, she makes me feel different than anyone else I’ve ever met. So yeah, I try to kiss her. And get the aforementioned adverse reaction.

I sit alone in the cafe, pondering long and hard long after she’s left. Now that I think of it… I’m relieved I didn’t kiss her. I wouldn’t want to try to kiss with a secret still between us. See, I haven’t told her I’m a wizard. And the idea of doing so just, terrifies me. I wish I knew more half-bloods so I could ask how their parents did it. How does one even break news like that?

\---

Well, in my case, spontaneously. A week after the kiss disaster we go to see a movie again. The failed kiss hangs thick between us without being mentioned. Eventually, to try breaking the tension, I just say it. Leaned over and whisper to her that I’m a wizard.

I had been fully prepared for disbelief. I had figured I’d have to prove it to her with a spell or something, surely, since there’s no way she could believe it. But she does. She says “oh” and looks startled and a little frightened, somehow, but there’s no incredulity in her eyes. I’m dumbstruck.

“You mean, you believe me? And… It’s okay?”

“I. Um.” She shifts in her seat awkwardly. “I don’t know if it’s okay. It’s still a shock. But yes, I’ve met wizards before. My cousin is one. And all of them have been kind of freaky, but you’re not like that at all. I don’t think I could be scared around you.” Her eyes are sincere and so, so incredibly warm. “I feel like I could tell you anything.”

I lean in for a kiss again, certain that now is the time, but she stops me with a finger. She’s chewing the inside of her cheek nervously, as if gearing up for something. “What’s wrong?” I ask softly. Her eyes are wide gazing into me, at a loss. I take her hand. “You can tell me anyfink’, you know.”

She nods. Her fingers are shaking but her voice is steady. “I’m a bo-- well, no. But. Yes. I’m male.”

It takes a long time for me to understand. She explains in a whisper about what transgender is, and the surgeries and pills that people can take, and how to her parents she’s still a boy. She’s still groping for words to explain how she’s feeling when the theater employees kick us out. 

“Do you get it?” she asks. She looks terrified, walking out with me. We’re still holding hands, frozen together. 

“I… Well, no,” I answer honestly. I see her tear up, but I can’t lie to her. “I don’t think I could ever, like, understand somefink like that. Maybe no one could, without feelin’ it.” I’ve stopped walking to face her, and I’m taking hold of her other hand. “But… it’s okay. I mean… I don’t think anyfink could stop me from seeing you at this point. I, er…” So, so close, I could count her eyelashes if I wanted to. “I really think I’m in love with you, you know?”

And with no secrets left between us, we share a kiss at last.

**Author's Note:**

> ...actually i can't.


End file.
